It's Happening Again
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Dinah Hunter has always known the Demon Headmaster would return and when she sees the Hazelbrook trio at St Champions, the moment she's hoped would never happen has come. Spoilers for 1x06


I don't own the Demon Headmaster, but I loved the classic series, and I am hoping there will be more references and characters from the classic series in the reboot.

Please let me know what you think.

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It's Happening Again.

When she got home from work, an ordinary day, she was surprised when she logged onto the internet and found the email she had always hoped she would never get waiting for her.

The moment she registered the fact she had it, Dinah Hunter opened it and quickly read the contents, hoping and praying that some smart aleck little kid had just found the website she had prepared a long time ago when internet technology had become far more versatile over the years in the hopes of helping whoever found the website when they discovered something really wrong from someone she had not seen in a very long time and was playing a joke on her, but when the automatic cameras she had set up in the closed building of St. Champions came on the next day which was programmed to turn on the moment someone walked through the door, she had to accept the reality.

She had stared at the computer screen with shock until she saw that whoever had gone through the challenges she had placed on the website had found the GPS coordinates for St. Champions.

All she had to do now was wait. She hadn't known what to expect at first, wondering if it was just some kind of prank. The arrival of those kids had surprised her, and she had listened to what they had said both inside and outside the school when they went through the gate and discovered the octopus symbol she'd inked onto the door before using the hopscotch key. She had known from the moment she'd chalked the combination into the squares the Demon Headmaster would never work it out even if he noticed it; the Headmaster's logical mind just was not geared for that kind of intuitive thought process.

The next day when she had returned home from work, already dreading what would be waiting for her, Dinah watched as three kids, three teenagers, turned up outside the gates of the school where most of her memories were bad because of that tall megalomaniac, came to the front door of the old school - she had never found out the reason behind the closure of St. Champions, but she didn't really care at the time and she still didn't.

She frowned in curiosity when she caught sight of their uniforms, and she zoomed in at one of the girls, a girl with long light reddish hair. She was wearing a uniform which reminded Dinah of a cross between a Nehru jacket and a tunic. Emblazoned on the girl's left breast was a red H.

Dinah frowned. She had seen that uniform before. A local school, beginning with H….And then she had it. Hazelbrook, a school well known for being a failure. _Isn't that the school which has become a pillar of the community recently? _Dinah thought to herself curiously, although she'd had a bad idea why three Hazelbrook students were in the school, and she switched on the microphones for the entranceway of the hall and she tuned in the cameras.

"…._this has got to be his school," _the boy was saying while they examined the grimy dust-covered photographs of the prefects.

Dinah stiffened. _His school? _she repeated to herself.

While she tried to think of something different from the thoughts she had of what that meant, she saw the line of photos of the Prefects who'd been hypnotised by the Headmaster to terrorise the school while imposing his type of order. Dinah closed her eyes as she remembered the chant she had heard so many times during her first few weeks at the school. _"The Prefects are the voice of the Headmaster. They must be obeyed."_

She paid close attention when one of the girls, she couldn't tell which just yet, asked as they examined the photos. "_Do you think he hypnotised them too?"_

Dinah tuned them out for a moment. She had been asking herself why were three Hazelbrook students here, and why had they gone on the website she'd set up? What was happening in their school?

But now she had a good idea, and it scared her.

She bit her lip as she thought about everything she knew about the place. She had never truly paid any attention to the local news about schools. But she had heard about the so-called revolution about a new Headmaster who'd come to the place and turned it around.

_Oh, no. _

The moment she had been waiting and dreading for the last twenty-three years had finally arrived.

The Demon Headmaster was back.

But how?

Where had he been all of these years?

Dinah had gone to a lot of trouble to set up an algorithm with a photo of the old Headmaster she had known along with a clip of his voice to let her know if he had appeared in public life again, but after so many years she had given up hope of making sure he never did. So why hadn't her alarm tripped? If his photo appeared on any website, it would let her know, and since schools were important in society she should have known instantly.

Dinah went cold as a terrible thought went through her mind while she pushed her immediate questions out of her head for now. She had research to do.

She quickly moved onto one of the other computers she owned. Dinah had two computers, one for work and the other for pleasure. The one she used for her everyday work was the one which she was using to track the Hazelbrook students, but as she logged onto her second computer she instantly opened the search engine and tapped in **Hazelbrook Headmaster revolution.**

It didn't take long for the results to come up, but she turned back to the screen when the mikes picked up the voice of one of the girls. She turned and saw from the footage they were inside the Headmaster's old office.

She chuckled when she took in just how well she had designed this little obstacle. Yeah, it had been hard to set up the phone, but it had been worth it even if it was the type of trick the Headmaster she'd fought so many times in the 90s would have never understood.

"_Who do you think that is?" _one of the girls asked as they gazed at the portrait of the Headmaster she'd commissioned ages ago for this little course.

Dinah blinked in surprise. _If they don't know who the man in the portrait is, then why are they there? _She had thought when the boy, Ethan - she vaguely recalled from the names they'd used and said on camera had said St. Champions must be his old school, she'd gotten the idea in her mind the Headmaster she'd known was back.

_No, _she realised, _they don't seem to recognise the Headmaster in the portrait. _

So what was going on? Why didn't they recognise the man in the portrait?

She leaned in closer and listened to the rest of their questions and whatever they said on camera. She became increasingly worried when she heard the girl with the red hair say the voice in the phone was different from the voice of their Headmaster. _Does that mean there…are two of them? _Dinah thought to herself in confusion, and she turned back to her other computer. The search was done by now and she began opening up different pages and began reading. As she'd thought, the news of the changes to the school which had been run down to the point where the students were practically tearing the place to pieces had spread far and wide. Dinah vaguely remembered the details; she knew the Headmaster who'd taken the place over months ago had changed everything, but she hadn't paid it much attention and now she had the awful feeling she should have done.

She began checking the websites. She needed to know if this Headmaster was the same or different. So many things popped out in front of her which sent up red flags in her mind, all the talk about Command, Control, and Conquer, that talk about inspiration….(the page where the Headmaster had told an online journalist who had a reputation for helping the little guy out was worrying in itself, especially since the journalist had uncharacteristically written "Control of problems, Command of yourself and your emotions, and you can Conquer anything, which contradicted everything she wrote, from what Dinah could see when she quickly read a few of her other articles) but what scared Dinah the most was that there were also pages about how the Headmaster had unleashed a small army of drones which he claimed was security for the students. Dinah could understand the need of course for protecting the students, but after reading so many things about the Headmaster she wondered if he was trying to keep the students afraid.

Finally, she was able to get a picture of the new Headmaster of Hazelbrook.

It was not the Headmaster Dinah knew. This was someone else.

And yet…. This new Headmaster of Hazelbrook was dressed in an immaculate black suit, his greying hair was styled in a manner similar to the Headmaster Dinah had known, and he wore a pair of dark glasses.

It was the expression which almost clinched it in Dinah's mind. The old Headmaster, the one she had dealt with until that mess with the Hyperbrain incident, had worn a cold expression on his face.

This one wore a similar expression.

Another Demon Headmaster.

It scarcely seemed possible, but it looked like it was true.

Dinah couldn't help but wonder to herself, _Is this the old Headmaster's son? _

It didn't seem possible, especially since the Headmaster had claimed more than once childhood was a waste of time and was inefficient, which was one of the reasons he had tried to tamper with evolution.

At first, she was prepared to just say it was a fluke, but she remembered everything she had heard so far from the clips. It was clear something was going on, but at this point, she had no idea what it was, although it was clear there

But as she continued to watch the footage in the Headmaster's office, Dinah had to accept the possibility her Headmaster was not back, although she had no idea where he was, someone similar but new had taken over Hazelbrook, and these three students were trying to fight back. She rolled her eyes when the red-haired girl didn't recognise the videotape, but she wasn't surprised; VHS tapes had gone out of fashion so quickly and now it was hard to find anyone with a working player anymore.

Dinah didn't know whether or not she should be flattered when the boy Ethan said she had a twisted mind; she had been called many things because of her intellect, but never that. She took it as a compliment, but her brief humour went out of the window when she heard a reminder of the new Headmaster.

What was going on now?

She was horrified when she saw from the cameras viewing the outside of St. Champions that crowd of people suddenly getting online messages entering a recognisable hypnotic state. She shared the surprise of the Hazelbrook kids as the group of nearby people approached them, filming every moment, but Dinah recognised what had happened.

The Headmaster Dinah and the rest of SPLAT! had known had never been a slouch with technology; the Super Saladin, the evolution accelerator, and whatever work he had done on Hyperbrain was proof of what he was capable of, and she knew if the internet in its current incarnation compared to the limited system they'd used when Hyperbrain was taking over had existed, then the Headmaster would have used it for his own agenda.

But the scale….

She listened to the lollypop lady as she said: "_Disorder is the enemy of achievement."_

Yeah, they had been hypnotised alright. She wasn't surprised, and yet she wondered why this new Headmaster had even bothered going so far as to take over another school like the old one had taken over St. Champions when he could easily have taken over the world through the internet. Why did he have to play games all the time?

All of those people had been hypnotised as well, and she could definitely tell those were the kind of things the Headmaster she knew of old would make people recite time and time again.

There was no doubt in Dinah's mind wherever this Headmaster had come from, he knew about St. Champions and he probably knew about Dinah herself, and he wanted what was in the bag. Dinah watched silently as one of the girls took the tape and tried to run off, but she stopped and went back to help her friends.

Dinah knew the Headmaster would never understand the thought behind what the girl had just done, but she did. _I did the same thing when the Headmaster threatened Lloyd and the others, and I kept on doing it whenever it happened again. We all did. _

She wasn't worried about the tape. Its loss was something that would be missed, but she had made a digital copy as a backup. It was essentially just a collection of clips showing the Demon Headmaster in the past, but what this new Headmaster did with it, she didn't know.

The good thing was when they handed the tape over to the woman they kept the cover, that meant her note was probably still inside it. She closed her eyes. _Please, be safe. _

She might not know why this Headmaster had just repeated his predecessor's plans to take over a school, but she knew he would have the same long term plan.

Dinah sat back and thought about what she was going to do. She was going to have to speak to those kids, and since she had a good look at their faces and enough camera footage, she wouldn't have any trouble finding them. She would need to wait near Hazelbrook for a bit, but Dinah knew she could do it.


End file.
